Publisher's Synopsis
The erosion of the epistemological certainties of empirical science in Europe and America towards the end of the nineteenth century gave rise to a major reassessment of romantic thought and its applicability to the development of a more flexible approach to questions of personal identity and selfhood. This book constructs a twentieth-century tradition of romantic science by suggesting points of interconnection in the work of five key figures in transatlantic intellectual history: the American philosopher and psychologist William James; the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank; the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger; the Danish/German psychologist Erik Erikson; and the British neurologist Oliver Sacks. - - Each of these romantic scientists has a practical and theoretical interest in the experience of individuals: with the object of empirical observation being replaced by the living subject of phenomenological study. The book demonstrates that romantic science is essentially an experimental and humanistic tradition, which corresponds to the modern condition by attempting to reconnect the narrow sphere of clinical observation with the broader realities of lived experience. Stimulated by recent debates over rival models of consciousness and a renewed interest in theories of the self, the book argues that in their challenge to Freud's adoption of ideas from nineteenth-century natural science, these thinkers have enlarged the possibilities of romantic science for bridging the perceived gulf between the arts and sciences.
